Autumn Leaf Bookmarks, 4 Colours, No Paint

About the set

Four tall bookmarks, 44 x 150 mm and 1.04 mm thick, printed in four filaments on an AMS. Autumn leaves (sugar maple, ginkgo, red maple and trembling aspen), a white trillium on its long stem, a slice of carnelian agate, and a staghorn sumac leaf. Nothing is painted on. The colours come from thin 0.08 mm layers of yellow, translucent red and translucent blue stacked over ivory white.

They print face down, so the picture is the side that touched the textured plate: smooth and matte, with no ridges to catch on a page. The back is plain ivory. The rounded top has a 3.2 mm tassel hole and every corner is rounded.

These filaments are strongest in autumn golds, oranges and reds. Greens are muted and violets are out of reach, so the set is autumnal.

Printer

I printed these on a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon with an AMS and they came out well. The pictures are made of thousands of small colour patches, so the printer must change filament automatically during the print. Other printers with an automatic multi-colour system (Bambu AMS lite, Prusa MMU3 or XL, Creality CFS, Anycubic ACE Pro and similar) should work, not tested by me. They need a suitable slicer setup. I have only included Bambu Studio projects.

Files

• bookmark-1-branch.3mf: autumn leaves

• bookmark-2-trillium.3mf: white trillium

• bookmark-3-agate.3mf: carnelian agate

• bookmark-5-sumac.3mf: staghorn sumac

• botanical-stone-bookmarks-5-plate.3mf: those four plus a fifth design, indigo mountains in mist, on one plate. I have not printed the mountains one.

These are Bambu Studio projects. They should also open in OrcaSlicer, not tested by me. A plain generic 3MF is not included.

Filament slots

Keep these slot assignments. Other spools change how much light the layers let through, so the colours will shift.

• Slot 1: Bambu Lab PLA Matte Ivory White (11100)

• Slot 2: Bambu Lab PLA Basic Yellow (10400)

• Slot 3: Bambu Lab PLA Translucent Red (13210)

• Slot 4: Bambu Lab PLA Translucent Blue (13611)

Print settings

• 0.4 mm nozzle, textured PEI plate, 65 C bed for the first layer. Print face down and do not flip them.

• Two height ranges are already on the object as a height range modifier. Do not remove it or change the layer heights, or the colours will be wrong: 0 to 0.64 mm is the picture, eight colour layers of 0.08 mm; 0.64 to 1.04 mm is the back, two layers of 0.2 mm.

• 100% infill, 2 walls, no brim, no supports, no ironing, prime tower on.

• The project also carries printer settings, so Bambu Studio shows the printer preset as modified: no Z hop on the first layers (lower boundary 0.3 mm), wipe off, and a 25 mm travel distance before a retraction. The picture is the first layer, thousands of small patches, and the stock retract, wipe and hop between patches can knock one loose.

Time and material

Slicer estimates for an X1 Carbon: one bookmark takes about 1 h 35 min to 2 h 19 min and about 14 g with the prime tower. The agate takes about 3 h 56 min. The plate of five is about 7 h 39 min and 48.6 g.

Tips

• Wash the textured plate with dish soap and water first, and dry it well. The whole picture is the first layer, so it has to stick everywhere.

• Print one bookmark first to check your first layer.

• Dry the translucent filaments. Let the plate cool fully before you flex the bookmarks off.

• PLA at 1 mm bends gently, but it is not paper: do not fold it. Thread a tassel or a ribbon through the hole.

Credits

All the artwork is original, drawn in code for this set. No image generator, photograph, scan, painting or third-party image was used. The leaves and flowers are natural botanical studies, not emblems.

Made with Polychrome (https://polychrome3d.com), the desktop app I build to turn pictures into multi-colour plates. You don't need Polychrome to print these files.